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“The major part of today’s correction can be attributed to the budget announcement of imposition of long term capital gains tax on equity, introduction of tax on distributed income by equity oriented mutual funds and fiscal slippage.

Announcing the 3rd quarter performance, G Srinivasan, Chairman cum Managing Director, NIA, said, “The results of the company have improved substantially due to improvement in combined ratio. The drop in combined ratio was aided by lower claims ratio and operating expense ratio due to various steps taken by the company.”

“We have raised Rs.900  cr. subordinate debt in the form of  non secured (NCDs)  at 8.25 per cent  with a tenure of 10 year  and with a call option after 5 years. The response was  highly satisfying  as it has been oversubscribed by almost 200% of the issue size. We will only retain R900 crore . It augments our solvency by about 23 points,”said MN Sarma, CMD, UII.

Subhas Chander Garg, Economic Affairs Secretary immediately after the Budgetary announcement said the government will be completing merger of three public sector general insurers in FY 2018-19 and will list the new merged entity during the year.

“We don’t want four government owned general insurers competing each other. We would prefer two general insurance companies in the market. That means three of the public sector general insurance companies should merge first and then go for listing ,’’ said Ravi, Mittal, additional secretary,Ministry of Finance.

“We are now launching a flagship national health protection scheme to cover 10 crore poor and vulnerable families. This is approximately 50 crore beneficiaries, by providing them up to Rs 5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation,” Jaitley said presenting the 2018-19 Union Budget. 

Apart from unveiling plans for Rs 5 lakh healthcare cover for 10 crore poor families for free,the Budget-2018 also announced providing other services like micro-insurance to Jan Dhan Bank Accounts holders which will help increase penetration of Insurance.  In the line of government’s ‘Ease of Living’ objective, the Government has encouraged Senior Citizens to buy health insurance by increasing tax exemption limit for the same under Section 80D from Rs 30, 000 to Rs 50, 000. 

Epicentre of the quake was near the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border and occurred at a depth of around 190 kilometres,” an official said in Srinagar.There were no reports of any damage in India due to the earthquake.

Vijayan who is retiring in February 2018 considers improving insurance penetration as an unfinished agenda in his tenure. Considering there is less than 3 per cent penetration in India and almost 7 per cent globally, it indicates a huge potential for Insurance in the coming years.We have seen insurance penetration go up, especially with schemes like Fasal Bima Yojana, Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana and Suraksha Bima Yojana. But it is still very low, especially in the general insurance sector and still has a lot of area to cover,”

Various studies state that medical inflation has been rising on an average of 10-12% each year. Unfortunately, health insurance in India is bought for tax exemption and not as per need of the individual or the family. An increase in the 80 D limit will assist customers in opting for health insurance keeping future health emergencies in sight.